'It has been the opposite in my case' - Umesh Yadav slams BCCI's workload management

In recent times, Umesh Yadav has been slightly overshadowed by the dominating presence of India’s pace trio of Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma in Test cricket. In 2019 he played only four out of India’s eight Test matches and the four he was able to play was because premier pacer Jasprit Bumrah was injured.

However, every time the red cherry was offered to him he made sure it does the talking on his behalf. In his appearances, Umesh scalped a total of 23 wickets with the best figure of 5/53. Also, he has a much better average and strike-rate to show than the renowned trio for the last year.

Furthermore, he has been completely sidelined from the white-ball setup. He played a single Twenty-20 International (T20I) match in 2019 and did not don the Indian jersey in the 50-overs format.

Umesh Yadav not happy with BCCI’s workload management

The 31-year-old is clearly not a happy guy with the way the Indian team management has treated him despite him being on equal footing, or even better at some times, with the other pacers. He has criticised BCCI’s workload management.

“Workload management is a balance that you strike when you are constantly playing matches. In my case, it’s been the opposite. I have played lesser and lesser in the past two years (2018 and 2019). So there hasn’t even been optimum workload for me. I am 31 years old and the next four to five years are very important. If you look at my record. I played four Tests last year (2019) and before that another four in 2018. In white ball, I played only one game last year,” Umesh was quoted as saying by The Times of India.

The bowler also said that at his age it’s better for him to bowl as much as possible and cited that as the reason for him playing five first-class matches in this season to keep his workload in balance.

He also tried to play County cricket to get more playing time last season but that, too, did not work out. “I got a county offer last season (from Gloucestershire). They wanted me to play seven games but the BCCI workload management policy doesn’t allow me to play more than two or three games. So the deal didn’t work out. Also, I had some niggles to take care of after IPL,” he said.

Umesh further expressed his disappointment for his lack of playing and said that in a year which will be dominated by white-ball cricket, especially for the T20 World Cup to be held in Australia, he will be left with only IPL to play competitive cricket in, other than the New Zealand tour.

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